do we have a story now? or at least a goal?

[icarus the improviser]

like I get the youtube algorithm recommending me Zomboid videos, and all I see are new vehicles, people doing challenges, and features being polished, stuff like boats...which yeah, its a mod, but I find it weird to see nothing about the story, or even a goal, it's like the entire game is a foundation, a giant, huge, colossal foundation, a big ass mile-long puddle, wich sure, you can kick it for a few hours, and get wet, or play for hundreds of hours, and do the equivalent of rolling in a puddle and say you are swimming, but you can't dive in it, and get invested, without hitting your face on the sand below.

I remember playing the new update and having fun with mods, and the new features, and then after 12 hours, I stopped playing, for the same reason I stopped playing before, there is no goal, there is no objective; And no "surviving", isn't a real objective, at least not a motivating one, that's like saying my life objective is to drink water, like yeah, I have to do it given the circumstances, and technically that is an everyday objective, but that is not something that will drive me, or my life, with kind of goal is that?

like mate, can't we have something of a story? or a goal? like I know its hard to implement the story when you are the only character, at least the only alive one, but you can still do something, and you can use the fact that you are the only one alive, to the story's advantage, there are entire movies based around this.

Example:

given that we are the last one alive, we are likely to go insane, so how about a character that just becomes fanatically religious, and has to make offerings to god in front of Muldraughs church? like burning huge piles of bodies, or murdering any zombie that is dressed like a pilot, because "god got angry for us trying to reach him", and then build the dudes character around these insane assumptions, that could be some fun, and each week he gets more insane, and he starts thinking that he has to give god a different offering each week, or he will betray him, and punish him by turning him into a nut, you can create some pretty funny and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up story like that, and technicly you can drag it forever, making each week requiring more insane sacrifices, and have the character do ♥♥♥♥ like, writting a love poem to the zombie lady he axed in the face, and bringing her flowers, and then draggning her body to the church, and have a wedding, where the priest is a cheese sandwich, that he befriended, and then he calls him cheese louise, and starts hallucinating the cheese sandwich telling him that god is going to turn his wife into a plane pilot, to test his loyalty, and then he goes on a rampage trying to kill god, and BAM objective "destroy all churches in the world", there, a long ass objective that will take more than 200+ hours to complete, and you have to drag cheese louise with you to fell safe for he protects you from god's wrath.

so you leave your wife at "home", or bring her with you in the trunk of your car, and your character just starts saying how much he loves her, and then after you destroy all the churches, you discover that she was banging cheese louise behind your back, that she is pregnant and will bear his children, a boy named mozart, and a girl named hella, and then you just lose it, and you eat cheese louise out of rage, and get sick for eating heavely molded bread that you have been carrying in your bag throughout 200+ hours of play time, and then you are about to die, and ask your wife "I may have failed our marriege in life....or death, not sure, but I would like for a chance to revive what we had" there, a subtle admitance that he misses the world he was in, all this time he knew he was nuts, and that it was caused by lonliness, but he still adhered to it, for the sake of some comfort, after losing everything.

and then he makes a deal with God when about to die, and builds the last cross in the whole map above a grave, and say "this is the last memory of your symbol in this world, and I will make it here, and in return, you will secure that I and my wife leave in piece together in the afterlife", and then he buries himself and her in the grave, and then we cut to 3 days later, and there is a walnut tree growing, lol.


there, something compelling, that will take many hours to complete, that many will die trying, and that has a satisfying ending, and yes, it's absurd, but it's memorable, fitting and the light-hearted tone of the story will contrast with the constant misery and tension, that surrounds the landscape.

it's not that hard to implement something like this too, all you have to do, is use the dialogue box for a cheese sandwich, and a body, and have like a task manager for the sacrifices, and if you are afraid that you can't create dialogue for 200+ hours of gameplay, then just repeat dialogue and use it sparingly, the protagonist is insane, hearing the same thing over and over isn't that hard to imagine.

there, can we have something like that? can we get some depth in this puddle? thank you for reading.

[Radiosity]

It's a sandbox game, the whole point is that you come up with your own scenarios and challenges.

Though whenever NPCs arrive (no time soon, FYI) there might be more in the way of actual quests and things, I dunno.

[Stone Cold Steve Harvey]

I agree with Radio, it's a sandbox game. Goals/Stories wouldn't really fit in with the game in my eyes. You make your own goals/challenges. Do a car nomad playthrough, increase difficulty, take over the mall, prison, secret government facility, West Point shopping district or the March Ridge dormitory etc.

You make your own character with their own story. I like how it works currently. You're just some unfortunate person stuck in a large-scale military quarantine filled with zombies, the game doesn't set the goals for you, you set your own goals.

I like how the story plays out currently, just on the radios and TVs. I prefer it to be more background noise for the first few weeks.[You could install the survivor radio mod for tons of more broadcasts]

[Sunshine]

Originally posted by Radiosity:

It's a sandbox game, the whole point is that you come up with your own scenarios and challenges.

Though whenever NPCs arrive (no time soon, FYI) there might be more in the way of actual quests and things, I dunno.

IIRC they plan to reintroduce the story from earlier builds regarding the two title screen characters, Bob(?) and Kate. I may have messed up their names but that is something they're going to look at after introducing NPCs.

[ROFLpl0x]

What kind of goal do you want or even reasonably expect to have?

As for your example, go and do it. You don't need the developer to tell you to burn piles of bodies in front of the church, kill every zombie dressed like whatever, or marry a corpse.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by Candor:

Originally posted by Radiosity:

It's a sandbox game, the whole point is that you come up with your own scenarios and challenges.

Though whenever NPCs arrive (no time soon, FYI) there might be more in the way of actual quests and things, I dunno.

IIRC they plan to reintroduce the story from earlier builds regarding the two title screen characters, Bob(?) and Kate. I may have messed up their names but that is something they're going to look at after introducing NPCs.

They are, yes. It'll be a random event you can find in the world as you explore, along with a bunch of other NPCs events, like the car events and the like. Probably will also have a scenario attached to it, I guess.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

I had the same concerns before purchasing the game and I'm still quite new. It takes a good amount of time to make a sustainable base and it's quite hard to do it without slipping up. I've yet to accomplish this. I've thrown sprinters into the mix and it definitely helps it make it more interesting, it throws in those unexpected moments making the game FEEL less grindy. I do agree there should be interesting elements at some point but the game atm isn't in a bad spot and can entertain a good amount of time. So when you throw in the need to add mods and still get bored within 12 hours are you interested enough in the game mechanics to stick around to experience the situations like you the ones you described? It seems to be a lot of work to put something scripted like that in the game and it would be critiqued quite heavily for it.

Idk the plans for this game. You can take it in several directions. I guess this is why people want NPC so bad. It makes the world more believable and flourish the game with possibilities. It makes the game easier to role play, to have different stories & personal goals etc. If anyone could link healthy discussions on this topic on what developers plan to do with this I would really appreciate. Most of the ones I come across just had people begging for for the feature & arguments, but I didn't see anything about how the developers would actually implement ideas and plans behind the subject.

Objectives and goals sound good but what would those be? Should it be like Most other survival games? Lets build a rocket. or Would they be more like goals similar to achievements?
- Collect this amount of water or food
- kill this many zombies
- drive this many miles
- Craft these things
- Max out this skill

My opinion would be that the game would be better off without that kind of approach. I think it would be more beneficial to have stuff like more scenario options, obviously NPC, interesting traits, things that affect the map over time etc. A scripted story wouldn't be bad, but if its in sandbox and it has characters with the same story that always happens at the trailer park then I can see how that could easily take you out of immersion. I'm sure the devs and a lot of us can come up with an endless amount of ideas but those ideas will influence the way the player approaches the game.

Right now, there's not much going on influencing my "goals" than the last games I died in. That's its weak point IMO. There are minor things that can change the experience such as rng loot and some options we can tweak to change the feel a bit tho. I can entertain myself with base building and make arbitrary goals around that. Would the devs prefer me to BUILD my own base? I couldn't tell you, it's not obviously rewarded. The map kinda does a number on me. I enjoy trying to figure out where I am on the map, marking it, deciding where I need to go next but I will learn these places & roads at some point. Atm it's a bit weird to see most of these buildings in order as if there are no other survivors around. At times there are barricaded houses with weapons stashed, that's about it. I haven't walked into a place asking myself "WTF happened here!" OR "this place wasn't like this a few days ago." Some of the mechanics such as healing, mood management seems like a WIP but I'm excited to see what will be done with mechanics like that.

Anyways, sorry for the sloppy post, wasn't thought out and unnecessarily long. Feel free to pick at it.

[Zeithri]

In a world of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ stories that litter all over modern gaming...
No I am sick of story-in-your-face and I am glad that the only goal here is personal growth.

[_TheBunnymaster_]

Radio, TV and written publications provide lore, and plenty of mods expand on this. These are just backdrop items to describe what is happening at the regional level. It's up to the player to determine what the motivation is, what (s)he is good/bad at, how they'll survive, and ultimately how they'll perish.

This isn't a game that has achievements or goal milestones like this. Play the Dead Rising Series or something else if you want something compartmentalized like that. This is a big sandbox where there are a lot more dead things than alive, and each time you play, you tell or extend the story of someone who tried to live in this environment.

[Ally]

I see a lot of people make the "its a sandbox" excuse when its a reasonable question. A lot of people like goals, there's nothing to keep the game being "endless" and a sandbox whilst still having goals. Eg, build a new community, once the community is built and stuff is automated the sandbox "keep it going forever" kicks in.

I personally like the game, been following it for years, but I am someone who likes a goal or an aim. There's a lot of fun to be had with sandboxes, but I personally like a goal or two to aim towards and a bit of story. Ultimately, sandboxes do get a bit tiresome when there's no one to interact with, no real story to uncover. Additionally, for people like me, I get mind flooded without a goal or aim. I don't know what to do, where to go, why I should.

There's never a reason to not have a goal or aim in games imho, but each to their own. I'd certainly be more inclined to play if I had a story/goal/guidance to achieve whilst living within the sandbox.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by Zeithri:

In a world of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ stories that litter all over modern gaming...
No I am sick of story-in-your-face and I am glad that the only goal here is personal growth.

+1 to this. Maybe if more devs gave a wet crap about telling good stories, I'd be more interested in them. As it is, most developers see story as nothing more than a framework to hang gameplay on, making them shallow, boring, and superfluous, with Bethesda being perhaps the worst example of this. Their stories are so bad even a literal sophomore would be embarrassed to write it.

That's one of the main reasons I moved away from story games (quite apart from the gameplay almost always being the same third person action game with stealth elements *yawn*) and over to sandbox games where I can make my own stories.

[_TheBunnymaster_]

Originally posted by Ally:

I see a lot of people make the "its a sandbox" excuse when its a reasonable question. A lot of people like goals, there's nothing to keep the game being "endless" and a sandbox whilst still having goals. Eg, build a new community, once the community is built and stuff is automated the sandbox "keep it going forever" kicks in.

I personally like the game, been following it for years, but I am someone who likes a goal or an aim. There's a lot of fun to be had with sandboxes, but I personally like a goal or two to aim towards and a bit of story. Ultimately, sandboxes do get a bit tiresome when there's no one to interact with, no real story to uncover. Additionally, for people like me, I get mind flooded without a goal or aim. I don't know what to do, where to go, why I should.

There's never a reason to not have a goal or aim in games imho, but each to their own. I'd certainly be more inclined to play if I had a story/goal/guidance to achieve whilst living within the sandbox.

The goal of this game is 'try not to die' while having the sandbox world you set up suggest the manner in which that happens. Maybe you're a gonner three hours in while trying to find a building that's not locked up in the middle of one of the towns. Perhaps you made it okay and seven months later you take a random scratch or bite during the run to get that last can of chili off the shelf you were saving for a rainy day. Either way, you determine every bit of how the story unfolds and there is no handholding. Ultimate replayability is taking John/Jane Q Random and telling their story, right up to the bitter end.

[GreedRecycler]

Originally posted by _TheBunnymaster_:

Originally posted by Ally:

I see a lot of people make the "its a sandbox" excuse when its a reasonable question. A lot of people like goals, there's nothing to keep the game being "endless" and a sandbox whilst still having goals.

There's never a reason to not have a goal or aim in games imho, but each to their own. I'd certainly be more inclined to play if I had a story/goal/guidance to achieve whilst living within the sandbox.

The goal of this game is 'try not to die' while having the sandbox world you set up suggest the manner in which that happens. Maybe you're a gonner three hours in while trying to find a building that's not locked up in the middle of one of the towns.

Gonna stop ya there buddy, the goal of the game isn't "Avoiding death", the game already tells you at the start of every new game that "This is how you died". It's more like a re-telling of your last days before you died. No matter how long you lived, in the game's cannon, you still "died". I like that, makes the game more bleaker, if a story mode should be added, it should be how they handled the previous versions, like how you would different chapters.

I still remember the good ol days when the tutorial/first story had you play as the man from the main menu trying to save his wife.

[AMURA]

Once Upon a time there was a man or woman the only Human Being Alive. The story Goes as.... Dont Die.... They lived happy for awhile untill dave got eaten by the hamster

[Velba]

I love how creative the OP's idea's are, but he doesn't bother to roleplay them in the game XD

[njs]

Basically: story campaigns/events are planned for the future; in the meantime, use your imagination.